


She says I wanna do right but not right now

by owlaholic68



Series: A bed of California stars [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: “I mean, you just hit the pedal and go, right?”The Chosen One learns how to drive.





	She says I wanna do right but not right now

“Do you like it?” Carla jumps on the hood of the car, sliding around to the other side. She opens the driver’s side door and slides into the worn leather seat.

“What is it?” Sulik suspiciously looks at it from afar. Next to him, Lenny looks excited for the first time in probably a hundred years.

“It’s a car, a rag top too! Does it still work?” Lenny runs over and peers in the open passenger-side window.

“Yeah, Smitty fixed it up for me. Here,” Carla fumbles for a set of keys, “let me fire it up!” She turns the keys in the ignition. The centuries-old engine groans then starts with a healthy roar. Sulik jumps backward, having never seen a working car before. Carla laughs, having jumped a foot in the air too from the shockingly loud noise.

“Do you want to take it out for a spin?” She yells, leaning on the window.

“D-do you even know how to d-drive?” Lenny seems skeptical, but climbs in the passenger seat anyways. Sulik, unsure of what exactly is happening, opens the back door and sits on the back seat bench.

“Uh, maybe?” Carla buckles her seatbelt across her lap. “I mean, you just hit the pedal and go, right?”

Lenny chuckles and fastens his own seatbelt, suddenly grateful for it, even if it is just a lap one. As they sit in the junkyard, he gives her a quick lesson on basic car operation. Thankfully, the car has a fancy automatic transmission, so he doesn’t have to explain how to use a stick shift.

Lenny still remembers his mother teaching him how to drive when he turned sixteen. He almost crashed his first car, a beat-up sedan, on his very first driving lesson. By the time he was able to afford a shiny new Chryslus with his substantial doctor’s salary, he was a driving expert.

“Okay, now d-don’t floor it, but _gently_ hit the gas,” he coaches. Carla’s heavy leather boot hits the gas pedal and the car lurches forward. Behind them, Sulik startles and grabs the back of their seats.

“You can do this?” He asks, mildly alarmed.

“Yeah, yeah!” Carla tries again and this time, the Highwayman smoothly glides forward. “Okay, I’m going to try and drive it out of the junkyard.”

An hour later, they’re cruising down the cracked wasteland highway. In the back seat, Sulik is fast asleep. Lenny leans with his elbow on the windowsill.

“It was probably so much better before,” Carla breaks the silence, “if you had nice things like this.” She’s finally gotten the hang of driving, sprawling comfortably with her foot on the gas and one hand on the wheel.

“N-not really.” Lenny nervously itches his arm. Carla slowly stops the car and looks over at him.

“Really?” she softly asks. “Even with everything that’s happened, you’d really prefer all this?” She points out at the wasteland, at the crumbling ruins they can see in the distance.

“I g-guess,” Lenny stutters, “I mean, my life was pretty okay, since I was a doctor. But most of my friends and family…Well, between the economy and the war…” He stops. “And the government keeping secrets from us, and the draft…”

“Hey,” Carla reaches over and touches his arm, “you don’t have to talk about if you don’t want to. I’m sorry, it’s just with everything I’ve ever heard about Pre-War life, I thought it was some kind of, I don’t know, sparkling utopia. White picket fences and gorgeous women in gowns and pearls, you know.”

Lenny shrugs and looks away. “That was j-just the rich. My family wasn’t so lucky. I did alright, but only because most d-doctors were getting recruited by the military, so civilian surgeons were in high demand. I was able to afford a decent apartment and a nice car, but my parents…” he swallows hard and remembers his father calling him on the phone, telling him that his childhood home had gotten taken by the bank.

“My parents moved in with me a few years before the bombs fell. My mother g-got really sick, and even the best doctors couldn’t do anything. And the hospital bills were so high…” he pats the side of the Highwayman. “I had to s-sell my car. And a few months later, the bombs fell…”

Carla stays silent. The wasteland wind whistles through the open windows of the car. Lenny clears his gravelly throat.

“I do prefer t-this, even if the world is a bit of a d-dump and I look like a zombie.” He drags himself out of his morose mood and flashes a brief smile at Carla. “And you couldn’t cruise like this. There were a lot of laws r-restricting car speed. You’d get pulled over as soon as you broke 85 miles per hour.”

She seems to perk up at that. “Well, good thing it’s not like back then.” She gently, _gently_ pushes down on the gas, and the car starts rolling back down the road. “There’s an old mining town a little ways away. Let’s stop there for the night.”

Lenny leans back in his seat and looks out the window. The sun is starting to sink on the horizon, tinting the clear sky bright orange and purple. He looks over at Carla, young and carefree. Next to her, despite his age, he feels young again too.

“It _is_ better,” he murmurs. She doesn’t seem to hear him over the engine. He smiles and puts his feet on the dashboard.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Look at Miss Ohio" by Gillian Welch. This was originally supposed to be a part of my [Music prompts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11101803/chapters/24771525), but I felt like it should be a stand-alone piece.
> 
> Come find me at my [Tumblr.](https://owlaholic68.tumblr.com/)


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